It's coming straight for us

‘It’s Coming Straight For Us… where are we in the metaverse?‘  

The Colony, our fictitious governmental bureaucracy, has morphed into the last global BigTech corporation. Ngarrindjeri artist, Clyde Rigney Jnr, is their new CEO and is launching a dazzling meta-metaverse, the NearNow, with a series of empowering memes aimed at artists, ‘How to be successful in the Metaverse’. 

The project includes satirical ads about the psychology of marketing, supremacy thinking, surveillance capitalism, animations, poetry and DIY bunker art concepts.

During a series of community arts workshops, we co-create with community participants to experiment with surreal, immersive transmedia art experiences.

This work aims to respond to the challenges artists face through disruptive tech such as AI and mixed reality.

This CACD exploration challenges power & privilege across realities: The metaverse is coming – how will we shape its stories, rules and values?

It will include mixed-media art practices, exploring absurd ways to enter the metaverse, and ‘how-to’ spoofs to get us all AI-ready for this confused new normal, the NearNow.

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Given the launch of new ‘artificial intelligence’ large learning models like Chatbot GPT4 and social media giants like Google’s Bard and Meta, and with a few companies poised to appropriating our entire collective digital knowledge, it is time to politely ask: What have these techno-feudal overlords and their artificial intelligences in store for us?

What happens to human exchange and relationships when we are constantly manipulated and prompted to market at each other 24/7?

What role will artists have in this branded new world?

Visit the NearNow website for more.

Murrundi at ACE + Biennale of Sydney

Change Media has been commissioned by ACE to collaborate with Ngarrrindjeri artist Clyde Rigney Jnr to create a video installation for ACE’s ‘A river that flows both ways’ exhibition in conjunction with Biennale of Sydney 2023.

Inspired by rivers that flow both ways, ACE has partnered with the Biennale of Sydney to present a local response to the 23rd Biennale, titled rīvus (Latin for “stream”). Dedicated to nature and water-based ecologies, rīvus tackles many timely environmental themes including pollution, climate change, and the effect of colonisation on First Peoples’ custodianship of ecosystems.

Exhibition: Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, Adelaide CBD, February 4 2023 to March 18 2023. Also see their website here: https://www.ace.gallery/watch-read-listen/river-voice-murrundi-murray-river

‘A river that flows both ways’ exhibition 2023. Photo by Graham Hancock. Courtesy of Adelaide Contemporary Experimental

Excerpt from the poetry performance:

“Our waters are not healthy.

Introduced management systems continue to severely damage Murrundi and the Kurangk.

The impacts are affecting our rights as Ngarrindjeri to remain Ngarrindjeri.

Everything is connected: If our rivers die, we die.

The River Murray is a colonial delusion, it is Murrundi who sustains us.

We urgently need to come to terms with Murrundi, with each other, for future generations to be healthy.”

Credits:

Performed by Clyde Rigney Jnr, Tangane/Yaralde Ngarrindjeri, from Murrundi and Kurangk, South Australia

Co-written + co-directed by Clyde Rigney Jnr, Jen Lyons-Reid and Carl Kuddell

Produced by Carl Kuddell and Jen Lyons-Reid

Recorded and edited by Change Media

Supported through the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts and the South Australian Government through Arts SA.

A river that flows both ways: Selected works from the 23rd Biennale of Sydney: rīvus is presented by the Biennale of Sydney and Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, with generous support from  the  Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.  

The River Voices project was originally commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from the Australian Film Television and Radio School for the 23rd Biennale of Sydney (2022), titled rīvus.